Reality Checks    Introduction  Carbon neutrality    Misc Calculations    Meat vs biofuel  Air pollution  Options  Biofuel Bob

Energy solutions boil down to picking the least destructive source, which is easier said than done. There are many ideas coming down the road to deal with our energy and global warming issues. Wind can supplement up to 20% of our power grid. When located away from bird migration corridors its environmental impact is minimal. Cost competitiveness will depend on the price of oil but it looks likely that the price of oil is going to grow increasingly unstable and in an upward direction as we head for peak oil supply and competition for that oil grows. The cost of the fuel for wind power is a constant.

Solar is also growing as a supplement for electrical power. Things are complicated, to say the least. For example, if you live in Seattle, solar is seven times less efficient than in Phoenix. However, Seattle generates most of its power from hydroelectric which is carbon neutral, but also comes with an environmental price tag in the destruction of river ecosystems and salmon runs.

The advantages and disadvantages of coal and nuclear are well documented, and also have their supporters and detractors. I have gone on record several times saying that I don't think nuclear should be used until fuel supply, proliferation, and waste issues are better addressed. The cases made against nuclear have gone overboard claiming that it hasn't a single redeemable value, likewise, supporters have tried to make it look like it has no faults. From an air pollution and CO2 production stand point, nuclear is the cleanest non-renewable alternative for electricity, beat out only by the renewables, wind, solar, wave, geothermal etc. If you have them, use them, just don't build more without better addressing safety, proliferation, and waste concerns first.

Many energy experts think that the trend toward electrification is going to continue. Advances in technology will make wind and solar more and more efficient. Clean coal technologies and extraction techniques are no closer to being viable than hydrogen, fusion, or cellulosic.  Clean coal proponents are analogous to biofuel proponents. It is destructive now, but we must continue to build infrastructure because we know in our hearts that one day it will be environmentally friendly.

Electric motors are hundreds of times simpler, far cleaner and much more efficient that internal combustion engines. Viable battery technology is all that has stood in the way of these cars and that hurdle is about to come down. To date, these cars are being spearheaded by entrepreneurs. One of the best sites to go to for information on them is here. Be forewarned that anytime you go to a site that promotes its cause, plug-in hybrids or biofuels, there will be biased information there--always watch for it and always be skeptical, and that includes information on this site. The strength of an argument is all we have to base rational decisions on.

And, as with all of our other energy options, the picture is much more complicated than you suspect. For example, if you live in Seattle, your car (when driven in all-electric mode) will be entirely carbon neutral because the electricity to charge your batteries comes from hydropower, which, as I mentioned earlier has its own environmental drawbacks. If you live in California where they have a mix of electrical power generation, you will be just as carbon neutral as a car using soy-based biodiesel (without having to plow one carbon sink or usurp 14 acres of the planet annually).  Of course, that's assuming soy-based biodiesel is not actually producing more global warming than fossil fuels.  Depending on which study you think has a higher probability of being correct,  the joint study by the Department of Agriculture, the study from the University of Wisconsin, the study in Science or the Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, soy based biodiesel is likely to be worse for global warming than fossil fuels.

If you live in the sun-belt and have solar panels, you may be able to charge your car during the day between trips. If you live in Ohio, where they get 80% of their electricity from coal, your electric mode is no better than a gasoline car . Your car will be no better from a CO2 perspective than a gasoline car. One advantage that would remain in Ohio is that the plug-in will still use a lot less liquid fuel and cost a lot less to run because you will still be getting about a hundred miles to the gallon equivalent mileage (purchase price will be main factor in break even miles).

Now you know what I mean about complexity. That is not to say that just because all choices are imperfect, and that all issues are complex, that all options are equal. I strongly favor the plug-in option for several well defended reasons, some of which I have already mentioned. The idea that I could own a car that gets over a hundred miles to the gallon appeals to me. Three arguments against plug-in cars when comparing them to soy-based biodiesel are the pollution and CO2 emitted by power stations, their higher cost, and the fact that they are not yet being mass produced.

Cost is easy to deal with. It will come down with demand and mass production. Note that soy-based biodiesel is also not cost effective which is why it gets a dollar a gallon tax assistance. But soy oil is a supply side commodity, increase demand for it without meeting supply and the price will just get higher. but, biofuel supply is constrained by available arable land. Without plowing up more carbon sinks, biofuel costs can only go up.

Now, mass production requires big sales, and big sales depend on beating the competition. The main competitors to hybrid plug-in cars will be conventional cars, including soy oil burning diesel cars, so anyone who buys a conventional  car when a plug-in hybrid would have sufficed are essentially helping to hold down the growth of plug-in hybrids. There is no panic to use biofuels. It isn't like their small reductions in CO2 (less than a percent--see check #4) are going to make meaningful difference to global warming or reduce our oil dependency enough to make a meaningful difference in the next several years and allowing the corn and soy infrastructure to get big is a mistake anyway. Waiting for the plug-ins to be mass produced is not a problem.

Power plants have been getting cleaner and cleaner. That trend is going to continue.  Some power plants are burning bales of switchgrass to supplement their coal. Directly burning bales of switchgrass is very close to being carbon neutral because it does not have to be processed. This process is far, far, more efficient than converting that switchgrass to a liquid fuel first using cellulosic technology and then burning it in an internal combustion engine (which are notoriously inefficient). Any engineer worth his or her salt can explain why. In other words, if you are going to grow your energy, you cannot get more energy per acre than by burning bales of switchgrass to make power for plug-in electric cars. No liquid biofuel comes remotely close to this process in energy generated per acre of planet usurped or in being carbon neutral. This argument alone completely blows the soy-based biodiesel argument out of the water. Burning bales of hay takes no new technology and would do far far more to reduce CO2 than feeding 11.5 football fields worth of processed soybean oil to an  internal combustion engine (which is a grossly inefficient way to use a biofuel in comparison).

Plants only convert about 1% of the suns energy into useable energy. Solar panels are far more efficient than plants at doing that as this chart demonstrates.

And here is the clincher, what is to stop the owner of a plug-in hybrid from burning a biofuel in its internal combustion engine? In other words, why would a biofuel enthusiast argue against a plug-in hybrid? The two concepts are compatible. The only people in the link who may not like this idea are the people who grow the food crops, refine them, and sell them. You can see how the owner of a biodiesel gas station would not care for the idea that their customers now only show up every other month instead of every week. This is basically the argument used against big oil companies. They don't want us to use less gas.

Even with switchgrass we cannot hope to replace but a fraction of our energy consumption with biofuels. And I am not promoting switchgrass at this time. I am only using it to make a point about soy-based biodiesel. This site explains what our  future energy options are going to be barring some technological breakthrough of unknown origins. Note the chart near the bottom of the article. Renewable fuel technologies of today are expected to play a small role. Improvements in the way we generate electricity will continue, making plug-ins ever cleaner as time goes by.